Overcoming Limiting Beliefs

Overcoming Limiting Beliefs

Recently I mentioned manifesting in a previous post, but didn’t go too in depth. I’m going to explain exactly how you can manifest the things you want in life. No matter how positively you think, how many quirky rituals you decide to do, or how good your intentions are your subconscious beliefs always govern the way you act. Without recognising and changing these limiting beliefs you won’t be able to manifest what you want in life.

Why Should I unblock?

If you’re like me then you’ve really struggled in the past to overcome negative behaviour or patterns you engage. Often because you just didn’t know what was truly causing it. Sure, you can say ‘I have problematic views around X, Y, Z and it makes me act out’. But unless you go into the specifics of exactly what those views are, how they affect your life, and what you can do to change them- you won’t make the progress you want to in life.

Identifying Issues

Before you even being to focus on the deeper roots of your actions you need to start off by identifying your issues. This is probably the easiest part of the whole process, it just involves a lot of self-awareness. Start off by looking at areas of your life where you’re unhappy, typically these are areas where your own choices are making you unhappy. For example if you always choose the same shitty romantic partners, or self-sabotage your relationships. You can choose to keep making stupid choices (and be unhappy) or you can choose to find the root of your issues. It really is as simple as that.

A lot of people they simply go through their daily lives without even vaguely reflecting on their actions or mood- as if it’s something they quite literally have zero control over. Now of course there are somethings that you can’t change, but when it comes down to it you need to actually want to identify and solve your issues to move forward.

Finding the Root

This is the long part. There are a ton of different ways to find the root of your issues, but I find journaling and writing everything down the easiest. That way I can visually see what I’m figuring out, and also have something to reflect back on. To find the root of your subconscious beliefs you pretty much always have to go back to your childhood. I’m going to use an example to explain the process here.

Let’s say your issue is the one mentioned above, self-sabotaging your relationships. You need to reflect back on the earliest influences on relationships that you had. This can be varyingly difficult depending on how good your memory is. What I like to do is split the beliefs I was taught into the different ages I was taught them. Focusing on the first age range think of all of the limiting beliefs you were taught at the time.

This doesn’t mean someone necessarily sat you down and taught you these things. You could have just as easily picked them up from actions of those around you. Write down anything that stands out as ‘important’ or changed the way you behave and think. Once you’ve done that write down the main belief you learnt at that age range, it’s usually quite easy to figure out which had the biggest impact. The repeat this step until you reach a point where the limiting beliefs you’ve listed correlate exactly to how you think now.

What Stands Out?

At this point you should have a list of 5 or 6 ‘main’ ideas you were taught as a child or young adult. These main ideas are the limiting beliefs that hold you back in life, no matter what you do they’re the things that dictate and impact your choices.

Now that you know these beliefs you should be able to see where they impacted your life and behaviour. If you’re going with the self-sabotaging example I mentioned earlier your realisation might be along the lines of: ‘It’s glaringly obvious that I pick co-dependant partners. That’s because I was taught from a young age that love can only ‘truly’ be expressed through obsessive attachment and dependency’. Yes, it really will seem that obvious.

Acceptance

Before you can start acting on changing your beliefs you need to accept them. This might be quick for you, or take longer if you’re really shocked by what you’ve learnt. It will take a little while for it to sink in that these are the thoughts that have been totally determining your life. Depending on your life experiences they can range from just annoyances to totally disturbing. There’s no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to process what you figure out. Just make sure to take them time you need to think about it. Now when you go do act in accordance to these thoughts you can stop yourself, and think of the reason why you’re acting this way.

Taking Steps Forward

Once you’ve identified your limiting beliefs and accepted that they are what made you who you are today, you can work on overcoming them. Each time you have the urge to act on your thoughts e.g, date an emotionally unavailable person, just

Pause

Breathe,

Acknowledge why you want to act that way,

then think of a solution. You need to actively act against your limiting beliefs. If you don’t feel worthy of dating a nice person, then only date nice people. If you put yourself down because you feel ugly, then start compliment yourself and practicing self care.

Be Patient

Patience is key. Once you start changing your old habits it will sometimes seem so much easier to just go back to the way you used to do things. But that doesn’t help you to grow as a person. By putting in the time and effort into making sure to overcome your subconscious beliefs you ensure that you will always have a much more positive outcome going forward. On off days you need to be patient and trust in yourself enough to believe that acting in your best interest will help you develop.

That’s all for this post! It’s the first one I’ve made in 3 weeks, hence why it’s super long. I really hope this helped some of you reconsider the way you view your actions and the driving force behind them. It can be difficult at first, but I really do believe it’s completely possible to change your life by changing the way you react to your subconscious thoughts.